The present invention relates to a container for a cassette. More particularly, the invention relates to a cassette container comprising a rectangular casing and a spring-biased drawer reciprocally and slidably received in the casing wherein the forward portion of the drawer bottom wall extends downwardly away from the cassette when the drawer is moved to an outwardly extended cassette-exposing position.
Containers having spring-biased drawers for holding a cassette are known in the art. Also known in the art are cassette containers have a frame-like bottomless slide reciprocally and slidably received in a casing for moving a cassette along the casing bottom wall in and out of the casing. These known cassette containers, however, continue to have significant problems and disadvantages in the art.
For example, the previously exposed cassette containers of the bottomless slide type continue to require storage of the cassette by inserting the cassette along the longitudinal direction thereof. The slide of this type of cassette container dictates fine alignment with the casing and is subject to distortion during various uses. Because of this, this cassette container requires more sophisticated molding of the components and a more complicated molding production of the cassette container is necessary which in turn means higher production and assembly costs. A further drawback in this cassette container is with respect to accessibility of the cassette for insertion in and out of the cassette container and visual inspection of the cassette during this operation.
The drawer-type cassette containers previously proposed continue to have significant disadvantages because of their complicated structural arrangement and overall dimensions being significantly larger than the stored cassette. Accordingly, these drawer-type cassette containers frequently require the stored cassette to be inserted in a particular direction in a rather impractical cumbersome and awkward manner of insertion into and removal from the cassette container. Moreover, the majority of these drawer-type cassette containers require that the cassette be stored in the container in only one prescribed orientation. That is, the tape cassette must first be placed with the head portion pointing toward the opening of the casing or the head portion of the cassette must be stored toward the rear of the casing. The above drawer-type cassette containers also do not necessarily provide easy grasping and manipulation of the cassette into and out of the casing with the operator using one hand. In addition, such drawer-type cassette containers have not heretofor had hub-lock projections for engaging the cassette in the stored position and wherein the hub-lock projections disengage from the cassette when the drawer is moved outwardly from the casing.
A cassette container which allows a stored cassette to be inserted into and removed in the short direction, allows either the thicker or thinner portion of the cassette to be inserted into the casing, provides hub-lock projections released from the stored cassette when the cassette is moved outwardly, and which provides an easier, less cumbersome way of inserting and removing the cassette eliminates many of the drawbacks of the current cassette containers. Moreover, this type of cassette container which has an overall reduced dimension and is simple in structural configuration, yet ensures that this container is easily and smoothly operated and durable under continued and different operating conditions also eliminates many of the drawbacks of the cassette containers known in the art. Moreover, a design of the above-type of cassette container, which is adaptable to high-volume, low-cost and easy-mass production of the component parts and assembly of the container would also be highly advantageous and eliminate many of the drawbacks of the known containers.
One of the most advantageous methods for producing a low-cost, high-volume cassette container of the above-type is by industrial molding of the component parts. It is in this environment where problems continue to occur in providing satisfactory cassette containers having all of the necessary and desirable features.